Empowerment strategies for native groups facing resource crises: A case-study of the Nuxalk Nation, Bella Coola, British Columbia

This thesis examines the opportunities for Native empowerment through the employment of a host of resistance strategies. The focus is on the significance of the creation and ongoing maintenance of worldwide indigenous alliances and how these alliances counteract economic forces of globalization that direct resource control.

Using a case study of the Nuxalk Nation in Bella Coola, British Columbia, the empowerment of this group through the use of a range of strategies partly afforded to them through tools of globalization such as the Internet will be explored. These strategies include maximizing opportunities for political leverage through international alliances and the international political arena and employing non-violent direct action as a strategy to protest environmental exploitation on unceded land.

Various resistance strategies, used in isolation and in combination with one another, can effect change and bring about empowerment to Native groups.